Sunday, 12 April 2009

Cheap delights: Amuse blush palette & LA girl lip palette

Happy Eastern, again! I was up early and I had not much to do, so my blog needed some updates. Did you eat lots of chocolate eggs yet?

I wanted to dedicate this post to the cheap and wonderful products I aquired since my last cherryculture haul. My first cheap suprise was the LA lip palette. I was enabled by Jojoba to buy the LA lip palette, which turned out to be pretty smashing! Jojoba already posted the best swatches of one of the palettes, Eternity, check it out on her blog (here).

I also bought Passion, which turned out to be a passionate palette of warm and cool colours. Actually, the mix of warm and cool colours is a bit confusing, as palettes normally are ór cool, ór warm, or neutral. I found Eternity to be neutral/cool, and very workeable for me. This palette is suitable for summer months, when I am sporting a (fakish) tan.

I made swatches and photographed them in full sunlight. The first three colours are really warm, actually they are truely Jamilla Camel colours, as I see her sporting lots of warmer colours (and looking good in them). And the last two are really cool toned berries.

A picture outside the sun. Feel free to click on the picture to enhance the view.

I was pretty gobsmacked by the softness of the lipsticks, they are really moisturizing and soft on the lips. They stayed on for a rather long time.

My favourite palette of the two is still Eternity, but I love this for mixing and for wearing in the summer months. For the $8 they are retailed you will get a set of 6 colours that are fun to experiment with, to step outside the box of your usual colour scheme.

Talking about cheap but effective: I bought the Amuse blush palette in Natural for a mere $3, and with the discount that was even a cheaper $2.40. In total, that would be $0.60 per blush colour! I did not expected miracles or even decent pigmentation from this palette, however, it is rather decent after all.

The first two colours on the left are actually the bottom colours: sorry for the confusion. The 3rd and 4rd colours are the upper colours. The pigmentation is really dense, and you can pick up lots of colour from a simple swipe with the fingers or brush. I was pleasantly suprised by this, as I expected a hard surface.

The first two colours (or the bottom from the palette) are neutral toned and a bit rosy. I love the first one, that is such a me-colour, so stunning. The second is wonderful as well. The third colour is a warm brick-like colour, which was not too flattering on me. However, I love the amount of shimmer and dimension in every blush, not too glittery nor to flat or matte.

The swatches in direct sunlight. The fourth colour is a bit peachy and works with my skintone as well. Isn't that lovely: three winners in a palette! What a deal, what a steal!

The only downside of this palette is the cheap case, and the blushes have a slight old-lady-ish scent. Nothing obtrusive, though.

It makes me curious for the other Amuse cheek palettes as well: they have a set named Pinky and one named Dusty Rose. I could not see the colours too well on cherryculture's webpage. However, I guess the colours are suited to their names, although the lower colours on the left look like bronzer types. Mmm, I will put them on my wishlist for my next order.